LNP 1.7%
Incumbent MP
Peter Dutton, since 2001.
Geography
Dickson covers the north-western suburbs of Brisbane and adjoining rural areas. It covers most of the former Pine Rivers Shire, now included in the Moreton Bay Council. Suburbs include Ferny Hills, Albany Creek, Strathpine, Petrie and Kallangur. Further west it includes areas such as Dayboro, Mount Samson and Samford Village.
History
Dickson was created for the 1993 election, though it was not filled until a supplementary election a month after the general election following the death of an independent candidate during the campaign. It was won for the ALP by Michael Lavarch, who transferred to the seat from Fisher, which he had represented since 1987, defeating the Liberal candidate, future Queensland state Liberal Party leader Dr Bruce Flegg.
Lavarch served as Attorney-General in the Keating government, but was defeated in the 1996 landslide by Liberal Tony Smith.
Smith lost the Liberal endorsement for the 1998 election and recontested the seat as an Independent. A leakage of preferences from his 9% primary vote presumably assisted the narrow, 176-vote victory by ALP star recruit, former Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot.
Kernot was defeated in 2001 by the Liberals’ Peter Dutton, who has held the seat ever since.
Peter Dutton has held his seat ever since. He served as a junior minister in the final term of the Howard government and as a senior minister in the Coalition government from 2013 until 2022. After the Coalition’s defeat at the 2022 election, he was elected as leader of the opposition.
Assessment
Dickson is quite a marginal seat and it is worth watching. Labor did quite poorly in Queensland in 2022 compared to other states. If they benefit from incumbency they could pick up a substantial amount of ground in Queensland.
It’s also worth noting that Dutton has increased his profile now as leader of his party, which will probably improve his position in his local seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Peter Dutton | Liberal National | 41,657 | 42.1 | -3.9 |
| Ali France | Labor | 31,396 | 31.7 | +0.4 |
| Vinnie Batten | Greens | 12,871 | 13.0 | +3.0 |
| Tamera Gibson | One Nation | 5,312 | 5.4 | +0.2 |
| Alina Karen Ward | United Australia | 2,717 | 2.7 | +0.5 |
| Alan Buchbach | Independent | 2,222 | 2.2 | +2.2 |
| Thor Prohaska | Independent | 1,618 | 1.6 | -0.7 |
| Lloyd Russell | Liberal Democrats | 1,236 | 1.2 | +1.3 |
| Informal | 3,996 | 3.9 | -0.5 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Peter Dutton | Liberal National | 51,196 | 51.7 | -2.9 |
| Ali France | Labor | 47,833 | 48.3 | +2.9 |
Booths have been divided into three areas. Most of the population lies on the urban fringe along the eastern edge of the seat. These booths have been split between north-east and south-east. The remaining booths have been grouped as ‘west’.
The Liberal National Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in the south-east (51.1%) and the west (54.7%), as well as on the pre-poll and other votes. Labor won 52.5% in the north-east.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 13.2% in the north-east to 18% in the west, but just 11.7% on the pre-poll.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LNP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North-East | 13.2 | 47.5 | 16,958 | 17.1 |
| South-East | 15.8 | 51.1 | 14,310 | 14.5 |
| West | 18.0 | 54.7 | 4,621 | 4.7 |
| Pre-poll | 11.7 | 52.3 | 38,111 | 38.5 |
| Other votes | 12.4 | 53.4 | 25,029 | 25.3 |
Election results in Dickson at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.
Does Dutton look worried
Hmm he wouldnt show it if he was
If they were worried he’d be spending time in the seat like John Howard did in 2007.
Well they dropped a lot of stuff on the Labor candidate today in the media and she has been a candidate in this seat before. So the LNP might be worried to leak what they did.
Nah Peter is fine here, not a worry for him
Today’s Welcome to Country at the Dawn Service was booed. As menntioned upthread Dutton is a cultural warrior but on racial/nationalitic issues such as Welcome to Country, indigenous flags etc he does not really focus on LGBT issues, Abortion etc.
Ali France picked up 16,437 preference votes in 2022, still 1683 short of sending Dutton home. That was a high water election for Labor here, but the lesson from 2022 is the Teal strategy can work in LNP seats. That’s the only way Dutton can be defeated in Dickson this time, so i’d say it’s worth a shot, since Climate 200 has no shortage of funds to throw around.
Leaking on on France probably suggests they expect her to make the count
Maxim what? Who is that a reply to, or what is it referring to?
People above mentioning the leaking of historical social media posts of the Labor candidate Ali France
She’s been the ALP candidate now for the past three elections. The fact that stuff is ‘leaking’ just now implies those looking for dirt on her are lazy, inept, desperate, or all three.
Why would the LNP raise Ali France’s historical internet commentary now when it’s always been publicly accessible and they haven’t raised it previously?
It just feeds into a perception that “politics needs to be done differently”:
Similar to “nazis” “gatecrashing” Ryan’s event in Melbourne and “nazis” booing at a Dawn Service”.
I think these”nazis” are gonna be busy the next 7 days, then disappear until another election comes around.
I have a relative who has collected the brochures in her letterbox for me from Dixkaon Division. From
The material she has had pushed into her letterbox it is clear that an election is taking place. Three ALP Pamphlets , 2 liberals and a Linertarian How to Vote.
The ALP have duplicated one of the pamphlets and the third is close to being g a duplicate on one side but not the other. One of the Liberal pamphlets a Dickson campaign pamphlet and the other a generic anti-Labor pamphlet, but you would only know what’s a liberal by the authorisation.
This level of campaigning does indicate that both parties thinks that Dickson is in play.
New Daily cites poll saying Dutton has lost 2% support, Labor on 24%, Ellie Sith on 16.5%, Greens on 5.1%. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/federal-election-2025/2025/04/26/peter-dutton-seat
Family First is preferencing Dutton, Legalise Cannabis has Dutton at #9, Smith at #3
One Nation is preferencing Dutton above Smith, though it’s another thing if that info gets into voters hands. Trumpet of Patriots has Dutton below Smith and a couple of Indies who helped Dutton over the line in 2022 aren’t standing.
Smith is clearly the candidate of the left, France’s best chance was 2022 and she was still 1,683 short.
it’s hard to see where Dutton’s 10% of preferences needed to beat Smith are coming from, while Smith’s 16.5% plus Frances 24% and the Green 5% are enough to beat him without significant preference leakage, then there’s Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice, good for more than 5% on their own, imo.
Less than a week to go until First Polls close !
John
April 24, 2025 at 8:49 pm
If they were worried he’d be spending time in the seat like John Howard did in 2007.
—–
This assumes he thinks spending time in the electorate would improve his chances, and that he thinks there’s value winning the seat if he doesn’t win the election.
Spending time in Dickson may hurt him twice. Once because he’s a terrible campaigner. Once because it makes him look desperate if he thinks he might lose his seat. A double whammy.
He really has no choice but to risk staying away.
The odds have narrowed here. There’s a joke that it had to do with Pierre Poilievre, the Canadian opposition leader, losing his own seat earlier on at the Canadian general election.
I not sure the situation for Dutton in Dickson with Poilievre in Carleton is even comparable.
The thing that might had led to Poilievre to lose his own seat was ironically how he even became the opposition leader. Poilievre and much of the Conservative support the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in 2022 where anti-vax truckers and far-right cookers disrupted Canada but it was Ottawa that got the extreme brunt of the disruption such as shutting down their downtown and massive loud horn noises during the night but with Poilievre and much of the CPC supported the convoy and opposed the removal while showing zero sympathy to those who opposed/got disrupted by the convoy, people around Ottawa largely never forgotten the convoy actions and how Poilievre/CPC supported to them which probably explains why Ottawa seat didn’t have positive swing to Conservatives unlike national wide. It’s probably similar to how Scomo support on Clive Palmer’s court case costed WA Votes.
Because it’s not like Dutton has shown complete disregard for the electorate in a highly public way in the recent past… Nah, his local campaign couldn’t possibly be taking on water while he chooses to be elsewhere…
obviously the circumstances in carleton/ottawa were very specific like marh says but after poilievre lost his seat in the canadian election i am backing dutton to lose here. i was already on a knife edge but that does it for me, poilievre and dutton both losing their seats, it’s too funny of a timeline to not happen.
Speaking about cookers it seems the Freedom Party of Victoria is not contesting.
@Marh, if you want an explanation for the weirdness of our politics, or the strength of the realignment, then look no further than calling a group of working class coded men (and women) protesting against authoritarianism ‘far right’, and lumping in ‘anti vax’ which has always been coded as hippy left.
In the case of Poilievre there were over 90 candidates in his riding motivated by electoral reform – not sure why they picked on him and not anybody else. Hard to know if it was tactical or just part of the overall election campaign but the NDP and Greens votes collapsed and the Liberals got ahead. With reference to comments above, Dutton cannot be a terrible local campaigner if he has managed to hold a marginal seat since 2001.
I prefer to try and base predictions on evidence but “it’s too funny of a timeline not to happen” is a very tempting justification. Until then I won’t jinx it.
But seriously, I don’t think Dutton will lose here. Dickson is outer suburban and Dutton has the highest profile ever which are two big marks in the LNP’s favour. On the smaller side, there are two major left-wing challengers which could mean a bit of preference leakage and Dutton has held this seat for nearly 25 years. Granted none of these factors stopped Carleton in Ontario but the Canadian Liberals’ polling turnaround was several levels of magnitude more extraordinary than Labor’s and Poilievre probably would’ve lost his seat in 2015 or 2019 if Canada had preferential voting anyway. Dickson is overall safer. I think the most likely outcome is an LNP retain, perhaps with a modest swing in Dutton’s favour.
Albanese is visiting this electorate today
The Courier Mail is reporting that exit polls are not looking good for the LNP candidate here
I’ve been getting a number of texts from Labor HQ asking to donate to their Dickson push, with poll numbers at 50.2/49.8, or even 50/50. I think seeing Pierre Poilievre go down on Tuesday put a spring in everyone’s step and reminded us that Dutton losing is a real possibility. So many people talking about going 2 for 2 in a week.
Yes, Pierre Poilievere losing his seat makes it more believable that an opposition leader could lose his/her seat. I can understand that it’s given Labor some optimism.
There are some differences between the two electorates. PP is from a wealthy riding on the outskirts of Ottawa. He pledged to shrink the public service and it didn’t go down well. There was tactical voting where NDP voters switched to Liberal. The longest ballot committee ran dummy candidates in his riding as part of an anti-FPTP movement aimed at getting leaders to act by splitting votes and giving people headaches. They wanted to do the same against Mark Carney but couldn’t get their dues in on time.
Albanese visted Dickson today
@”Bazza”
Seems somewhat humorous, your describing Dutton as just “the LNP candidate”…
Let’s see if he does a Poilièvre… For the record I don’t see him losing his seat, as hilarious as it would be.
Unfortunately due to having to put a 2 year old to bed this year during the coverage, I won’t be having an election party with drinking games this time around like I did in 2022.
But I need to have something on standby because if Dutton loses Dickson, my wife & I will absolutely be pouring shots!
If dutton were to hold dickson but do terribly nationally he will need to stick around until the next election othereise labor would absolutely win the by election
I am absolutely convinced that there will be honeymoon after the election and then after that the government will wish it had never been reelected. A few chickens will come to roost and there is a lot of disillusion and grumpiness out there… a second term government has nowhere to hide .. and those baseball bats are within reach. Dutton as a loyal party servant will wait until an opportune time – a year maybe.
If he can force labor to minority and make some gains he should be re-elected similar to how Abbott was but they will need to do really well
@redistributed. I fully agree with your assessment. Given how turbulent things are internationally at the moment (and it’s not just the USA), and the complete lack of economic reform we’ve had, I suspect that this might prove to be a good election to lose rather than win.
You’d rather be in government than not though, to have your hand on the wheel of fate, rather than sniping from the opposite benches?
Labor will implode within a year. Minority govt + debt + easing of the trump effect. People will absolutely have buyers remorse. This will likely be Drefus, albo and pliberseks last election expect people like freelander, elliot (if she retains) neumann, along wirh alot of other labor memebers to head for the exit in 2028.
Lots of people hoping Labor will crash come 2028. Are we going to ignore the fact that if Labor, as per the polls, win the election tomorrow night, a lot of it comes down to the absolute shambles of a campaign run by the Coalition that consisted of backflip after backflip, no consistency across their frontbench when it comes to headline policy and just constant negativity and lie after lie? In any cases instead of blaming Labor, the Coalition can bear the blame for digging their own grave if the outcome is as predicted.
Much of the same commentary was offered in 2022, and after the referendum.
I have a nice bottle of Prosecco to open if Dutton is done in.
As opposed to labor who run a positive campaign and only told the truth
(Sarcasm)
@Darth Vader I’m not quite onboard with only the truth but Labor has run a positive campaign, mostly. The negative ads that I’ve seen have been related to medicare and nuclear, whilst the unions had control of workplace relation laws.
As for the Liberals, they’ve promoted their policies through ads which were alright but their constant backflipping and lack of future vision apart from some vague promise that ‘Liberals will always be better economic managers’ (which is a lie) doesn’t cut it.
The problem that the Liberals will have going forward is that their talent pool is so shallow especially in the Reps – they have some good people in the senate – James Paterson and Andrew Bragg come to mind. After Dutton – Andrew Hastie seems the obvious candidate and would be a break with the past – though Angus Taylor would believe that the leadership is his by some divine right though a lot of the blame will be sheeted home to him as he is obviously not been up to being shadow treasurer. They desperately new blood. There might need to be a major realignment of the Centre Right and Right. Some of the Teals need to coalesce around and form a party – Allegra Spender or Kate Chaney would make a great party leader and have intellectual grunt. If they dragged in Julian Leeser or Andrew Bragg there could be a serious challenge to the system and that is what is desperately needed. The only danger with that would be is that they would probably lose their tactical Greens voters in particular but maybe keep middle class Labor voters.
The Liberals need to leave behind the skeletons of the past, which includes the likes of Ley, Taylor, Sukkar, Hastie, Cash, Hume, Paterson etc. Their future lies in the likes of Bridget Archer, Julian Leeser, Keith Wolahan, Zoe McKenzie, Andrew Bragg, and Dave Sharma. The only people from the ‘old’ guard that I’d keep are Ruston, McIntosh, Coleman, Jono Duniam etc.
As for the Nationals, they need a complete cleanout.
Normally the Orthodoxy of Politics is that people always get it right and we dont blame the voter. When KK led NSW Labor to the worst ever result in 2011 she said the “people of NSW who entrusted us with government for the last 16 years of government did not leave us we left them”. I could not have said it better. Fiona Scott former member of Lindsay said the same about the Teals on the Sky News Documentary that it was the party that got it wrong not the other way around. Whoever wins tommorow deserves to win simple as that. During the Dunkley by-election i said one metric of success for the government was to see if they can bring inflation under control without a recession. Countries like NZ and UK went into recession. The next metric for whoever wins tommorow is to grow the economy in a way that real wages, GDP per capita exceed pre-pandemic levels.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/dunkleyby2024/comment-page-8#comment-800243
The other issue for the Coalition is even if Labor form a minority government, the Teal seats give them a massive handicap at the start. It will be very hard to win in 2028 as well. This is an existential crisis for them.
Now before the Labor fans smile, barely scrapping in against Morrison and minority vs Dutton suggests your future isn’t too bright as well. It will be hard to have majorities in the future as the Green and whatever emerges from the Teals chew the centre left vote away.
And yes the Teals have Liberal seats and soon some old Nat seats, but long-term they are taking a demographics that Labor will need to win as their blue collar base disappears and the Greens take younger voters from them.
Judging by some of the comments here, you’d swear it was Federal Labor on the verge of demise, instead of re-election.
@Real Talk; “Another victory like that and we are done for.” Pyrrhus of Epirus, 281BC